After the departure from Mechelen, both the convoys of 15 January 1943 formed a single transport of 1555 deportees, including 287 children. The 77 deportees who jumped out of the train were not included in this statistic, but they nevertheless bear witness to the rebellious spirit of the Jewish population.
It took 2 ½ months to collect this number for the convoys of 15 January 1943. Since 1 November 1942, the average arrests per day had fallen to 21. The SS-men of the final solution had to organize raids. Helped by Belgian agents, mainly Flemish SS-men in Antwerp and Brussels, who were more numerous by the way, they tried to track down Jews in their hiding places. A few Jewish tellers, often with German nationality, helped the investigators. They were indicated by the name of the most dangerous among them, "Jacques", a Pole. The use of such means was paradoxical for an anti-Jewish service and signalled that the final solution crashed. The interruption of the convoys after October 1942 masked this. The departure of a transport on 15 January 1943, for the anticipated resumption of deportations in the spring, does not shed any light on this.
Upon their arrival in Auschwitz, on 18 January 1943, 1087 people were gassed immediately. The extermination figure - 69.9% - scored as high as the convoys at the end of the summer of 1942. Of the 468 people who escaped the immediate massacre, very few survived the liberation of the camps: 4 of the 18th- and 7 of the 19th convoy.
Source: Memorial of the Deportation of the Belgian Jews, page 29